The Rise and Fall of Indian Cricket and Mahi

The recent debacle in the series against Bangladesh once again showed that we possibly don't have the best players representing India. Overconfidence and high handedness often bring about your downfall in sport. India never played to its potential and the players seemed to think we are too strong for Bangladesh. The wakeup call was quiet harsh and so be it.
Selection is largely a call made by the selectors and the captain. While heads must not roll because of one series result, there are some serious questions worth answering. Dhoni once the poster boy of Indian cricket especially in T20's and ODI's is now no more the cool customer. He is clearly feeling the effects of criticism over the last few years. The question is he possibly has brought about his own downfall with some team selection decisions. His policy of not playing Harbhajan and Yuvraj who were his peers is surprising to say the least. His persistence with Jadeja, Ishant Sharma, Stuart Binny are difficult to explain in logical terms. The inconsistency of our bowlers have also added to the captain's woes. There is a clear lack of vision in distributing the workload between a pool of bowlers. Lack of use of Zaheer Khan and Ashish Nehra who still have decent skills is inexplicable. And India needs to play less cricket to avoid our players breaking down. There should be a balance between Test Cricket, ODI's and T20's. Will anyone in BCCI listen? Time will tell.

Lets Be Human Again

What a start to the new year..while every year i grow older, i always have a hope that the world would get better. But i wonder whether my optimism is misplaced. Religious intolerance and hatred seem to be so widespread now that it becomes difficult to pick up the morning paper or read an online news magazine. What is happening to mankind? I guess that's where the problem lies..many people are so fragmented that they refuse to see humans as a common race. First you have the international boundaries followed by state boundaries and then urban and rural divide, religious divide. i could go on and on. The point is in our search for identity and differentiation we are forgetting we are basically human beings inhabiting this lovely planet. Yet we do everything to spoil our planet, its environment, people to people contact.
I don't know what is the solution to these diverse problems of religion, race, language. Its about going back to the basics and believing that we are all humans first and we share the common set of problems around education, healthcare, sanitation, creating jobs and sustainable environment. The only way out is to educate citizens of tomorrow before they indulge in the same hideous acts of hatred and greed. Religious leaders, politicians, community leaders and educationists all have to work towards the goal of making the world 'human' again. As parents we need to teach the same set of values to our children. Now you would question, what is being human? To me its about being sensitive to people around you irrespective of their race, religion, financial status or which college they graduated from. My job gets me to travel a fair bit and one insight i have gained is people everywhere have similar set of problems. Yet there is so much anger and so much divisiveness. Its time we worked on solving our common problems rather than waste our energy on creating divide. Is any one listening? Lets change our mindset before its too late. We still have a chance.